Monthly Archives: September 2013

Jack V. Cohen makes some interesting points under the headline, “Tea Party Strategy is Unconstitutional” (U-T Letters 9/22/13). He asseverates “The constitutional process is to elect a majority of representatives who can pass a particular political agenda.”

First, so-called Obamacare has no Constitutional legitimacy. Its 2,700 pages were passed into law with not a single representative having read it. Recall, Nancy Pelosi said, “We have to pass it to know what’s in it.” Glenn Hubbard & Tim Kane in their new book, Balance, point out the framers did not believe the government had authority to grant rights. They recognized governments incessantly try to curb rights. Hence, the Bill of Rights misnomer, which is a series of prohibitions against the government. The Tea Party is defending the Constitution when few others will do so.

Second, The Congress is out of control borrowing trillions of dollars that are economically impossible to pay back, even by our children and grandchildren, variously estimated at $68 trillion to $200 trillion when fully accounting for the full off-budget items. The Tea Party is yelling, Stop!

Third, The electoral process is broken and gamed by Democrats and Republicans through Gerrymandering, whereby in Elections typically less than 60% of Registered Voters turnout, whereby President Obama only received only 31% approval from those registered to vote (VEP), and where local candidates receive 5% to 27% from those registered to vote. This can hardly be considered majority voting. One Senator represents about 19 million people in California but only 288,000 in Wyoming, which also makes it hard to contend that voting is equal representation or majority vote. Furthermore, the founders intentionally implanted gridlock, or “checks and balances” in the Constitution in order to “pit ambition against ambition,” with the purpose of intentionally “holding the government hostage,” against unconstitutional misadventures. The Tea party simply is holding politicians to their “Oath of Office.”

Fred Schnaubelt, San Diego

Tea party strategy is unconstitutional, By Jack V. Cohen (U-T 9/22/13) Tea party members of Congress profess to be loyal Americans who cherish the Constitution. Yet at every turn, a few members of the House of Representatives act in a manner that flies in the face of the very process they profess to cherish.

Tea party members in Congress are so focused on derailing health care reform that they are willing to circumvent the elective process in favor of getting Obamacare anyway they can.

Let’s be clear, health care reform has issues. The constitutional process is to elect a majority of representatives who can pass a particular political agenda. Instead, a few members of Congress are willing to hold the government and citizens hostage to a political ideology.

The governing process is supposed to be adversarial — to a point. When a majority of one political persuasion exists, that majority controls the political agenda. If the opposition is so intent on changing the agenda, then work hard to elect a majority of candidates with a similar view.

Holding the government hostage flies in the face of defending the Constitution. If you want change, do it at the ballot box instead of at the barrel of a political gun. Jack V. Cohen, San Diego

“The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property” — John Locke, 1632-1704

In The Great Degeneration, Harvard professor Nial Ferguson, who won an Emmy for his PBS series on the Ascent of Money, writes, “My undergraduate reading at Oxford persuaded me that the real point of English history was to establish three sacred principles. First, an Englishman’s home is his castle. In the case of Entick v. Carrington, Lord Camden ruled against the government for raiding the home of the radical journalist John Entick. ‘The great end for which men entered into society was to secure their property,’ declared Camden, quoting John Locke. ‘By the laws of England, every invasion of private property, be it ever so minute, is a trespass.’ Secondly, do what you like as long as you do no harm. ‘The privileges of thinking, saying, and doing what we please, and of growing as rich as we can, without any other restrictions, than that by all this we hurt not the public, nor one another, are the glorious privileges of liberty.’ Third, mind your own bloody business. The taste for making others submit to a way of life, as explained to the French, which one thinks more useful for them than they do themselves, is not a common taste in England.” 1765

All these rights are the pillars of the English rule of law, the products of a slow incremental process of judicial decision-making which have evolved in the courts, since the Magna Carta.

Today, in America, those who call themselves “Environmentalists,” claim rights are what they say they are and they can preempt the Constitution and our Bill of Rights for a higher purpose. A right cannot be a right if it imposes a burden on someone else. Carl Pope, Chairman of the Sierra Club until November 2011, once told a TV audience on “This Land Is My Land, “When you buy land in this country, you buy the right to own it. You don’t buy the right to use it.”